For Joan the ride became toil and the toil became pain.  But there was no rest.  Smith kept mercilessly onward.  Sunset and twilight and night found the cavalcade still moving.  Then it halted just as Joan was about to succumb.  Jim lifted her off her horse and laid her upon the grass.  She begged for water, and she drank and drank.  But she wanted no food.  There was a heavy, dull beating in her ears, a band tight round her forehead.  She was aware of the gloom, of the crackling of fires, of leaping shadows, of the passing of men to and fro near her, and, most of all, rendering her capable of a saving shred of self-control, she was aware of Jim’s constant companionship and watchfulness.  Then sounds grew far off and night became a blur.

Morning when it came seemed an age removed from that hideous night.  Her head had cleared, and but for the soreness of body and limb she would have begun the day strong.  There appeared little to eat and no time to prepare it.  Gulden was rampant for action.  Like a miser he guarded the saddle packed with gold.  This tune his comrades were as eager as he to be on the move.  All were obsessed by the presence of gold.  Only one hour loomed in their consciousness—­that of the hour of division.  How fatal and pitiful and terrible!  Of what possible use or good was gold to them?

The ride began before sunrise.  It started and kept on at a steady trot.  Smith led down out of the rocky slopes and fastnesses into green valleys.  Jim Cleve, riding bareback on a lame horse, had his difficulties.  Still he kept close beside or behind Joan all the way.  They seldom spoke, and then only a word relative to this stern business of traveling in the trail of a hard-riding bandit.  Joan bore up better this day, as far as her mind was concerned.  Physically she had all she could do to stay in the saddle.  She learned of what steel she was actually made—­what her slender frame could endure.  That day’s ride seemed a thousand miles long, and never to end.  Yet the implacable Smith did finally halt, and that before dark.

Camp was made near water.  The bandits were a jovial lot, despite a lack of food.  They talked of the morrow.  All—­the world—­lay beyond the next sunrise.  Some renounced their pipes and sought their rest just to hurry on the day.  But Gulden, tireless, sleepless, eternally vigilant, guarded the saddle of gold and brooded over it, and seemed a somber giant carved out of the night.  And Blicky, nursing some deep and late-developed scheme, perhaps in Kells’s interest or his own, kept watch over Gulden and all.

Jim cautioned Joan to rest, and importuned her and promised to watch while she slept.

Joan saw the stars through her shut eyelids.  All the night seemed to press down and softly darken.

The sun was shining red when the cavalcade rode up Cabin Gulch.  The grazing cattle stopped to watch and the horses pranced and whistled.  There were flowers and flitting birds, and glistening dew on leaves, and a shining swift flow of water—­the brightness of morning and nature smiled in Cabin Gulch.